The highest, most awakened mind is everywhere present. But it is neither high nor low. It means to break through your preconceived ideas. And blocks and dislikes. A kind of detachment. And to your initial perception. Eat frequently preconceived ideas and preferences.

[01:05]

Let the preferences come in later. Thank you very much.

[02:24]

I'd like to explore these practices a little more with you to see if we can make sense of them, useful sense of them. So, do you have anything you'd like to bring out? Yes. Okay, I wanted to. Yeah, but I always feel since so many people are not really Buddhists,

[04:04]

or remain some combination of Christian and Buddhist. My experience is when we do something that's very specifically Buddhist or liturgical, I find that some people kind of cut that somewhere. They make them think, oh, this is a religion, not something I can participate in. So generally, we don't. But afterwards, if we want to pass up, we have the .. We could .. What? Yeah, but then people don't really admit it.

[05:14]

I hear later. Yes. Okay. Please. I was not most awakened mind, I said. That's a quote from the Diamond Sutra. Mm-hmm. It means that everybody, everything has been, everybody has never been poor or not at all.

[06:23]

and if you are aware of this particular issue, you have to be afraid or you will be lost, because we are not the only ones suffering, so we are always telling people what's going on. that they don't keep up with me. I don't want to be a bad chap. I don't want to be a bad chap. In Ireland, in Ireland, in Ireland, I have a question referring to practice in everyday life.

[09:21]

I'm working with people who have a lot of problems. And one example would be persons who are . And one part is, I know that when I'm practicing, my work is changing, and it already changed. Through practicing. Through the practice, yes. Yes. You know, I'm a student. I'm a student. The other part is that I see and I have to see that people destroy themselves.

[10:43]

And my question is, how does Buddhism see that? Does Buddhism see that they destroy themselves? And how can I deal with this? You mean, can Buddhism help an alcoholic, or does Buddhism just accept that some people destroy themselves? For myself, I see often that I cannot help. The only thing I can do is accept. But maybe that desire to help that person, it deepens our desire to help.

[11:46]

Somebody you can't hurt but try, it deepens your desire to help. I think often we practice because we've been unable to help someone. So we transform that into helping everyone at least we can help. Yeah, in the early days when I started practicing with Suzuki Roshi, we had quite a crisis because one of the first people who practiced with him went crazy. And he was really crazy for a long time, but he practiced and helped him for a while, but then he went really crazy.

[12:49]

I remember sitting with him and he was telling me flames were coming up around him and he was really quite crazy. and for the people just starting to practice them. There was this wonderful man, Sukhiroshi, a Zen master. And obviously, Sukhiroshi couldn't help him, made it somewhat easier for him, but couldn't end his schizophrenia. So it made some people doubt Buddhism and doubt Suzuki Roshi and so forth. But this isn't a cure-all medicine. And we had the idea in the West also, for instance, that doctors should be able to cure everybody.

[14:16]

Of course, they can do a lot. But you can't cure everybody. But in Asia, they have a rather different idea of medicine. That health is not the medical establishment's responsibility, it's your own responsibility. And health is often equated with intelligence. Intelligent people find out how to make their diet work and so forth. I lived with a Japanese woman practically until she was 99. Lived in our house as part of our house for... She had all kinds of things she'd brew.

[15:29]

Every morning there was some little herb cooking. And she extended her diet into the plant world in all directions. And tracking her mood and and energy, and then deciding exactly what to do was part of being intelligent. And the idea of going to a doctor and saying, something's wrong with me, please help, just could never have occurred to her. If it's something specific, she'd go and then the doctor would treat her, in Japan at least, the doctors treat you for everything that's right with you, but not what's wrong with you. It strikes a rather strange philosophy, but the idea is the best thing is for the person to use themselves.

[16:35]

The best thing is that they cure themselves. So the doctor's idea is to strengthen the rest of you so you cure yourself. So his idea is to strengthen your health so you cure your disease. I'm not saying it's better than our system. It's just a different way of looking at it. So Buddhism is in that same world where it requires the individual to do a good deal of the work, not just the teacher. It's really hard to find out you can't help sentient people. I've actually found that people who are somewhat schizophrenic or quite schizophrenic, if they have an intention to get better, do better than alcoholics.

[18:05]

I could make other comparisons. And we've had over the last 40 years, I suppose, I've practiced with quite a few alcoholics. And some of them you can keep off for a couple of years. But I think Alcoholics Anonymous does a much better job than Venn practice. There's some overlap in the view. But the central idea that alcoholics help each other to get better seems to be the most powerful. I remember one guy, actually he was German. And he was in San Francisco for years.

[19:23]

And he kept trying to stop drinking. And once he was off for two years, he was married to an American woman. And then he disappeared for a few days. And he said, what happened? He said, I walked by this bar and I decided as usual not to go in and not to drink. And so I went down the street. And then somehow I found myself, I don't know how I got there, drunk in that bar. And one of the most famous of the Zen Buddhists, Aaron Watts, died of alcohol. And he claimed he enjoyed it. He said, I know I'm going to die. He said, don't mess with me. I'm enjoying it. And he drank openly with one bottle just to show how much he was enjoying it. And if I was driving him somewhere, occasionally I'd spend time with him.

[20:45]

I looked in the rear view mirror and he had another bottle of something else hidden that he was drinking secretly. But he was great. He laughed all the time. And he asked me to do his funeral. And he always sort of put down square Zen and straight Zen and stuff, you know. Square Zen? Square, bourgeois Zen, traditional Zen. And he didn't want any of the rigmarole ritual in Buddhism. But about two months before he died, he didn't look any different than usual. But he suddenly asked me, would you do my funeral?

[21:56]

And I said, sure, 100 years hence. He said, okay, but would you do my funeral? I said, sure. He said, I want the funeral of a high abbot. He wasn't ordained or anything, but I gave him his funeral. It was all a ritual, and I gave him a high abbot's funeral. It was okay. Hundreds of people came. It was great. He would have enjoyed it. Look, look. Oh, yeah. Somebody saying goodbye or saying something worse?

[22:57]

That was about 1972. Two or three, something. Yes. You have to wait, OK. Mm-hmm. [...] It wasn't necessary to ask him.

[24:16]

Oh, good. Oh, good. They were working for you. Yeah. In German, please. In German, please. In German, please. Well, I think it really makes a big difference in a seminar when we can not only have discussion this way,

[25:17]

But when we could have divided up into two or three small groups and discussed among ourselves. In German. And also trying to see how these ideas and words each mean to our own experience. We each mean through our own experience, how we each understand through our own experience. Because you really have to make this practical and bring it home to yourself in ordinary words. But at least we have this kind of discussion, which is something. Because I want to say again, this is possible, but it really helps to practice with a sangha.

[26:45]

It helps just keeping one's own practice going. And it helps to have a kind of shared Buddha field or field of practice. Yeah. Yes. You've seen it? Yeah. Yeah. Physiology.

[27:56]

One's own physiology or the physical plane of the world? No, no, no. It is a body. Yeah. And a lot of stuff is being done now by... medical doctor, I would like to see whether also you would be the person with the problem. Do you have experience of the change? If yes, what happens to her? And you have the experience of the change, and you do what with it? You just notice it, or what do you mean? top of our head with rain, change, and blurb.

[29:18]

Yeah. And so on. More than 50,000. Yeah, more than 50,000. I mean, had this been tested? If I just would have just get tested. This is looked on with now the article. What is happening to meditation? The brain, the brain, the eye, what would people actually negative things? Thank you. Yes. Yeah.

[30:27]

Well, in 1960, I'm sorry to sound so old, 1963 or so, a Japanese guy named Joe Kamiya at the University of California Medical School. Kamiya. He was Japanese. Kamiya. I think he was the second person doing the first experiments before him were in Japan. And they wired me up, you know. And I meditated. They did it at one conference once. I just was walking. They insisted I do it. They wired me up. This was in Hanover or something. But I embarrassed everyone because I just fell asleep. But I had a great nap. But anyway, Joe Camillo wired me up and Mike Murphy, one of my closest friends,

[31:29]

And a group of people. But I found I didn't like how they used the results. They tried to say, well, Sukershi and mine and Michael's and these were good states and we should try to achieve them and so on. Sie sagten, ja, das waren Suzuki Roshis und meine Zustände und wir sollten versuchen, sie zu erreichen. Dann gab es viel Diskussion, wie man eine Maschine machen könnte, die das hervorbringt. And I actually went to Joe some years later and asked that all my papers and the results be taken out of the test. For instance, I found a person who would naturally give to meditation. I might not send him down the main boulevard to the capital. I'd send him down a side road. because the effort to discover is more beneficial than the discovery.

[33:00]

And the person who goes down many side roads develops much more subtlety in all direction than just you achieve some goal. I'm here just because I wandered here by chance. But still, there's a lot of studies, and this friend of mine, Michael Murphy, spent 15 years or so collecting all the articles written in French, German, or English, in almost any language. He had 15 years spent collecting all these articles in English, German, and French, and he had a huge archive. He wrote a book based on this, several books, but one of the main books is called The Future of the Body.

[34:03]

Which is published in German as The Something Mensch. The Quantum Mensch. And it's got a hole right through the middle, right? They sent him even a stone one. But it's an interesting book to read. If you don't have it, you should get it. And it compares the way the Catholic Church measures saints and charism compared to cities and how cities and charisms compare and so forth. Are they called charisma or charisms? I don't know. Charisms is the... The Catholic word for the equivalent of Siddhi, special powers like mind reading.

[35:11]

What? Siddhi is Sanskrit. Yeah. Okay. I think that for the practitioner, you definitely notice changes. Yeah, they're interesting. And there's some that are traditionally and in fact markers in development of meditation experience. But at least in Zen, we don't emphasize the achievement of these things. And unless you were particularly ill for some reason, you wouldn't try to use practice to make you healthy. But certainly, if you want to improve your health and longevity, practice is a good thing to do.

[36:25]

I mean, I'm 84. Well, sometimes we don't tell the truth. And also if you practice with other people, you are always involved in their illnesses and psychic state and so forth. And I'd rather die soon than be separated from you. I would rather die early than be separated from you. Yes. I'm still thinking about the difference between breathing and breathing.

[37:35]

I'm still thinking about what makes the difference when I watch my breath, observe my breath. Maybe it's that a different consciousness arises. OK. And through this consciousness, I don't know whether I have a right picture, through this consciousness, it's easier to get entrance to the storehouse consciousness. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, that's probably it. But the best thing about what you're saying is you seem to have an intention to do this practice.

[38:47]

And you have doubt. You have a doubt that says, what is this about? Why am I doing this? That's really good. So to combine intention and doubt is the best. So I'm not worried. Just keep doubting and intending. This is fruitful. I really like how forthcoming you've all been with discussion and comments. That stopped all questions. Okay, she's always in an emergency. Okay. In a social setting, when I encounter a situation with people where I have the feeling something is wrong and I should somehow try to change it, what is the best attitude to go about?

[40:17]

I have a question about when I am in a social setting and in a situation I have the feeling that something is going wrong and I want to change something. With which attitude should I approach change? You have to diagnose the disease and then decide if it can be cured. And if it can't, endure the situation. And if you can, try to do something. And I think most often, you'd have to tell me what the disease is. You'd have to tell me what the disease is. But most often, you can change a situation with your stomach. I don't know if that makes sense.

[41:25]

But if you're in a situation where there's some kind of antagonism in the room or some bad feeling or something, if you put into your stomach the feeling the room should have, you'd think, And you put that very strongly in your stomach. And then you walk around bumping people with your stomach. Or just at least getting up near to them. Often the situation gets better. Yeah. And this is working when you do, when you practice, and that's fine. I think of Yakujo Hwangbo's statement that in the realm of the absolute, no understanding is understanding. that at the level at which you try to do something like this, you don't understand what you're doing.

[42:37]

You just intend it and let something function. And in Zen, this is actually called great function. Great function means to function in situation beyond understanding. But you might want to do something specific, like make somebody in the corner feel better. Or generate a particular mood. No. You'd have to tell me the disease. Well, there are sometimes, I think it's a disease of our time that everything is bad. Yeah.

[43:37]

And people take that critical attitude. And I know it myself very well. And that can be so strong that you get really helpless. Because if everything's wrong, and just if you say, well, it's not true, it's not wrong, they tell you. It's wrong to say that. No. They tell you, well, you are young. If you're the oldest I am, then you will see I also made this mistake. I think it's not that way. So this is the specificity. You cannot do anything but words. I would say, well, you be old, I'll be young and foolish.

[44:49]

I don't know. Sometimes you can use humor or find some way to change it a little. And And sometimes you can notice the kind of mind they're coming from and switch where their mind is at. That's possible, too. But in general, you don't want to mess with other people much. You want to leave them alone and enjoy yourself. And everybody, most people seem to have some kind of control mechanism going. Some people control everything by telling what is wrong. And some people try to do everything better. And some people always try to know, understand a little better.

[46:10]

Yeah, and you can watch it going on. And you can watch yourself doing the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. OK, yes. I appreciate that. You understand. In my work, I could say that I struggled for three days long. And by the end, I was exhausted. It was a shock. Because I assumed I had got lots and lots of energy leaks all pouring out of my body.

[47:14]

Yeah. Is there an advice on how to stop these holes?

[47:28]

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